<p><em>In a normal year, the spring sports postseason would be upon us. Alas, the COVID-19 pandemic wiped the entire spring schedule clean, bringing the 2019-20 athletic campaign to a premature end.</em></p><p><em>Over the coming weeks, we’re taking a look back and reviewing each Johnson County high school’s year in sports. Today’s focus: the Franklin Grizzly Cubs.</em></p><p><strong>F</strong>ranklin football coach Chris Coll isn’t big on making preseason projections for his team — but even after winning just three games over his first two seasons with the Grizzly Cubs, he had a pretty good feeling about his third year.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>He wasn’t the only one.</p><p>“You could just tell in the offseason with the dedication and the numbers in the weight room and stuff like that,” senior quarterback Drew Byerly said. “Then, Weeks 2 and 3 went by, and you could tell something was brewing.”</p><p>“You kind of get a good feeling, a good vibe about things,” Franklin athletic director Bill Doty added, “and to me, there was an energy in the air, a little bit of electricity in the air in those first two Friday nights.</p><p>More than two, as it turned out. The Grizzly Cubs started the season 5-0 for the first time in 50 years before losing a 49-42 shootout with Mooresville. They finished the regular season with a 7-2 record and manhandled Seymour in their sectional opener before losing to eventual Class 5A state champion New Palestine.</p><p>For a school that had not had a winning record on the football season since 1996, it was a watershed moment. Byerly, an All-State quarterback and almost inarguably the top male athlete in Johnson County in 2019-20, was the driving force, but Franklin had made across-the-board improvements on both sides of the ball over the previous two years, and they finally paid dividends in the win column.</p><p>“Our offensive line had developed every year,” Coll said. “We’d gotten bigger every year; we’d gotten bigger through the weight room, and we’d gotten bigger through getting some guys out, keeping them out and developing them.”</p><p>The magical football season was an avatar of sorts for the massive strides forward that the school’s entire athletic department has been taking in recent years. Byerly, for one, noticed a different buzz in the hallways at school in the fall — when Franklin also won another conference title in volleyball and enjoyed some success in soccer and cross country.</p><p>“It was definitely different,” he said. “A lot more people were talking about football, a lot more people were coming to the games, so the atmosphere around school and at the games, you could definitely tell a difference.”</p><p>The winning atmosphere remained through the winter. The girls swim team placed third in the state and the boys turned in another top-10 finish of their own. Meanwhile, on the wrestling mat, highly decorated coach Jim Tonte stepped in for the retired Bob Hasseman and helped the Grizzly Cubs win a county championship and send four wrestlers to Bankers Life Fieldhouse.</p><p>Tonte helped set the tone for his first season at Franklin with the Rage on the Stage, which featured the team’s season-opening meet taking place in the school auditorium.</p><p>“It was really cool,” Doty said, “and the atmosphere in there that night was just a carry-over from the fall, from football.”</p><p>That buzz was dulled a bit when the the spring season was wiped out due to the COVID-19 pandemic — taking with it some more potential good times.</p><p>Among those most disappointed by the lost season were Franklin’s softball players, who had taken state champion Center Grove to 11 innings in last year’s sectional final and felt good about its prospects in 2020.</p><p>“We were very ready for this year, excited,” softball coach Shelby Biehl said. “I think at first it was like, ‘Oh, this is a nice little break; I can catch my breath for a minute!’ — and then once reality set in that we were in this for the long haul and the whole season would be canceled, it made it different.”</p><p>Despite the slowdown in momentum that came with that break, there is still a sense throughout the community that big things are on the horizon for Franklin athletics.</p><p>Provided the fall season goes on as planned, the girls cross country team — which will add a talented freshman class to a squad that already includes former county runners of the year Lillian Lacy and Jenna Newton — could be among the best in the state, as could a girls golf team that returns its top four players.</p><p>Expectations will be sky-high again in both swimming and wrestling, where much of the top-level talent is returning — and a girls basketball team that has been ravaged by injuries in recent years has a deep veteran core that figures to get a boost from a dominant incoming group of freshmen that has not lost a game together in the state of Indiana at any age level.</p><p>Byerly, who scored his 1,000th career point during basketball season and will now be taking his football talents to Marian University, senses that his high school has its best athletic days ahead of it.</p><p>“I feel like through all aspects of athletics, now at least, there’s an expectation that winning is what it’s about,” Byerly said. “I definitely feel like with our facilities that we have and the coaches we have, the athletic directors, all that, it’s just going in the right direction.”</p><p>What high school sports will look like this fall remains anybody’s guess, but Doty can’t help but feel optimistic.</p><p>“I think we’re going to hit the ground running in July, and we’re going to get right back at it,” he said.</p>
